A Nation of Nannies & Julias

Last year, during the presidential campaign, Team Obama reached out to America’s single women by showing how a fictional woman named Julia only managed to make it from the cradle to the grave by depending at every turn on the largesse of the federal government. And it worked so well that those women chose Obama over Romney by a huge margin.

Why is it, though, that I haven’t heard old-line feminists such as Gloria Steinem, Jane Fonda, Barbara Walters, Joy Behar and Rachel Maddow, taking young women to task? I thought young women were supposed to build on all that empowerment that the ladies of NOW have been spewing for the past 40 years. As I recall, Ms. Steinem insisted that women needed men the way a fish needs a bicycle. Apparently that’s the case unless the man happens to reside in the White House. In which case, all bets are off. When they have a sugar daddy in the Oval Office, these powerful, glass ceiling-busting women can’t even manage to come up with $25-a-month to pay for their own birth control pills.

When I heard that New York City’s garden gnome of a mayor, Michael Bloomberg, wants to ban Styrofoam, my first thought was that Charles Krauthammer was right when he observed “A liberal is someone who doesn’t care what you do, so long as it’s mandatory.” But he neglected to point out that it has to be made mandatory by a left-winger.

Bloomberg, who has already banished trans-fats, sugar, salt, cigarettes, guns and large containers of soda, from what used to be a sophisticated city — but has been turned into a burg filled with yokels under his leadership — also wants to increase the number of parking spaces for electric cars. Just as an experiment, I’d like to see him ban toilet paper. That might finally awaken New Yorkers to the fact that the only thing big about their mayor is the size of his Napoleonic complex. But inasmuch as they already allowed him to get away with ignoring the two-term limit on mayors, my guess is that if the munchkin decided to add Charmin to his expanding list of contraband, the ninnies would let the nanny have his way.

These New Yorkers are barely human beings. You can more easily compare them to sheep or lemmings. That’s because no city in America has more self-identified liberals. They’re the knuckleheads who ignore the fact that “global-warming” was morphed into “climate change” the minute things began to cool down, which is like a casino arbitrarily changing red to black on the roulette wheel as soon as the little ball stops bouncing and settles in a red slot. So, naturally, these nitwits applaud Obama’s decision to do for weather what he’s already done for health care.

They’re the same folks who watch MSNBC and chuckled all 155 times in 24 hours that the network aired the moment when Marco Rubio, while delivering his rebuttal to Obama’s absurd State of the Union address, leaned over to grab a bottle of water. These New York liberals are the same morons who nodded when Hillary Clinton told the congressional committee that it made no difference who killed Ambassador Stevens and his three colleagues. And for good measure, they’re the same self-satisfied nincompoops who believe everything they read on the editorial page of the NY Times, and take pride in reading nothing else.

Obama used to say that the failing of the Constitution is that it failed to promote the redistribution of wealth. For me, the failing of the Declaration of Independence is that it mentioned “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Unlike the Constitution, which dealt with specifics and did so with wisdom and clarity, the Declaration was high-sounding balderdash and vague, to boot. It’s that “pursuit of Happiness” that opens the door to all sorts of nonsense. For one person, it means government-funded — which means taxpayer funded — abortions, marijuana or cell phones for everyone who wants one, but doesn’t care to pay for his own; for another, it’s a lifetime’s worth of unemployment insurance and food stamps.

When I hear conservative talk show hosts urge other conservatives to never say anything insulting about Obama or the rabble who adore him, I’m reminded of an exchange in Donna Leon’s set-in-Venice mystery novel, “A Sea of Troubles.” Referring to the inhabitants of a backward fishing village, a police sergeant says, “Pellestrinotti aren’t bright enough for something like that, anyway.” His superior, Commissario Brunetti, replies: “We’re not allowed to say things like that anymore.” “Regardless of whether they’re true?” “No,” Brunetti admits, “because they’re true.”

But even worse are those conservatives who are always urging Tea Party members to break away from the GOP and form their own political party. Each time I hear someone say something that stupid, I find myself wondering how much the Democrats are paying him.

Have these cheese heads never noticed that no matter how divided they may be on this issue or that one, liberals never split ranks? Is there a conservative in America who thinks that if a unified GOP can’t elect a president, a group consisting only of disenchanted Republicans is going to have better luck? How dumb does someone have to be not to recognize that all a third party would do is make it even easier for the Democrats to defeat us?

In the wake of ex-L.A. cop Christopher Dorner’s murderous rampage, it occurred to me that people who compose manifestos all appear to be whack jobs. Although there may be exceptions, the three who leap to mind are Karl Marx, Ted Kaczynski (aka the Unabomber) and now Dorner. So my advice is if you come across someone working on what he refers to as a manifesto, ask no questions. Just hit him with a baseball bat and move on.

And, finally, I confess I have no idea why Fox News thinks they’re providing a public service by placing a megaphone in the hands of loons such as Juan Williams, Geraldo Rivera, Leslie Marshall, Marc Lamont Hill and Alan Colmes. It stands to reason that if I wanted to hear left-wing drivel, I’d be tuned to MSNBC or CNN in the first place. But at least, dumb as they are, those five loons are all presentable. But what the heck is with Bob Beckel? It’s not just that he’s dumb as a rock and always appears to be nursing a hangover. But am I the only one who keeps expecting him to flick out his tongue and catch a fly?

About Burt Prelutsky

Burt Prelutsky, a very nice person once you get to know him, has been a humor columnist for the L.A. Times and a movie critic for Los Angeles magazine. As a freelancer, he has written for the New York Times, Washington Times, TV Guide, Modern Maturity, Emmy, Holiday, American Film, and Sports Illustrated.
For television, he has written for Dragnet, McMillan & Wife, MASH, Mary Tyler Moore, Rhoda, Bob Newhart, Family Ties, Dr. Quinn and Diagnosis Murder. In addition, he has written a batch of terrific TV movies. View Burt’s IMDB profile.
Talk about being well-rounded, he plays tennis and poker... and rarely cheats at either.
He lives in the San Fernando Valley, where he takes his marching orders from a wife named Yvonne and a dog named Angel.Author website: http://www.burtprelutsky.com/

Burt: Having read John Mills and Jeremy Bentham, I would be reluctant to characterize the Declaration of Independence as “high-sounding balderdash”. However, I do concede that the illiterate elite who rally under the slogan “yes we can” have successfully translated a very sophisticated idea into utter drivel.

Burt Prelutsky

cma: Mills and Bentham worked their side of the street, I work mine. The problem I have with the Declaration is that it’s the sort of thing that just about any country can come up with. It’s the Constitution that sets us apart.

Burt

Wheels55

Rubio reaching for water is a man taking care of himself. If that were Obama, he would have blamed his thirst on someone else (perhaps Bush?) for not giving him water.

Burt Prelutsky

Wheels: You’ve got that right.

Burt

sewcajun

Burt, I enjoy your articles and I share your opinion of some of the Fox News analysts. I find Colmes, Hill, Williams, and Marshall routinely annoying…but Beckel I find positively unwatchable. He’s arrogant, his arguments are lame, and he’s simply repugnant. I’ve stopped watching The Five because I just can’t stomach him. I’ve written to Fox News, but I guess enough people who share my opinion haven’t bombarded them with complaints. I don’t have a problem with Fox News having liberals represented, unlike every other news organization, but I guess it’s a real challenge finding a liberal who doesn’t make you want to upchuck your breakfast.

Burt Prelutsky

sew: At least on “The Five,” which I’ve only watched a couple of times, Beckel is out-numbered four to one. But having him then show up for a regular segment with O’Reilly is truly beyond the pale.

Burt

JohnInMA

As I see it from the time I spend in NYC, Manhattan in particular, New York is like my exposure to Southern CA and very different from the rest of the country, other urban areas included. I see two decent sized groups and one small group. The larger groups are the ends of the spectrum – rich and poor, with the small middle being composed typically of younger professionals wanting to get into one group (rich) before sliding into the other due to the cost of living.

In NYC, the rich see Bloomberg’s bans as good for the little people. And after all, they see large sodas as undesirable if not for imagined health reasons, then simply because they represent low class beverages. Even if they might drink sodas, paying more for multiple containers is a badge of wealth. Pretending not to care about the added expense is a class play. And most see the salt ban as good for the “Campbell’s soup buyers….”, for example. The struggling middle see accepting such political positions as a social right of passage. Perhaps it is a mandatory action to climb the ladder in NYC. The poor continually get hosed in the city, and may be preoccupied with trying to survive the educational system where 80% come out of high school uneducated in basics but perhaps well trained in ‘social justice’. The rich rarely send their kids to those schools, and the middle typically moves away to raise their kids if they haven’t shifted to the upper group. I know a number of families who make a semi-routine commute from western PA because moving to Jersey or CT isn’t a significant improvement. It’s a odd culture that ‘adapts’ to Bloomberg’s nanny efforts for a range of political reasons.

But in both regions, the middle is being squeezed brutally. Where the wealthy can both maintain a second ‘permanent’ residence elsewhere or simply move away, the middle is often stuck. Yet even in NY, there are stats suggesting skilled workers are leaving, especially those with universal talents (craft and trades, for example).

And on your observation of those who want to split off to a more conservative party, I find many – at least in comments made across the spectrum of Internet outlets including social media – to be transferring their anger from progressives and Obama to practically every elected official who doesn’t satisfy their political positions. You’d think Washington was full of basically two groups – Dems and “RINOs”. I like this sailing analogy. If you’ve ever approached turning turtle in a boat (capsizing), usually you’ve won more than half the battle if you prevent a full inversion with the mast completely immersed. Getting the boat fully upright and eventually turned into the wind is a lot easier in that case. But it seems there are a lot of people who would rather see a fully turtled boat if they cannot get a fully righted, rigged, and trimmed boat in a outright dead downwind run. I’m amazed at how many type things like, “A RINO is as bad as a Democrat”, and then proceed to describe almost every Republican as a RINO. Even more unbelievable (to me) some say it’s preferable to see things tank than to continue to support most Republicans. Or something.

Whatever happened to the idea of taking the most critical steps and righting the boat to start? When the situation isn’t as critical, nearing catastrophe, then we can debate who is conservative enough. It’s a mystery to me how the backlash continues to grow instead.

Burt Prelutsky

John: Sorry, I gave it the old college try, but I had to give up. Way too long for a comment.

Burt

Wally C

Beckel ruins a good sow like “The Five” with his trite rantings defending Obama no matter how obvious it is that Obama is wrong. I guess he doesn’t realize that this type of posturing ruins his credibility.

Burt Prelutsky

Wally: I was searching for a pun, but I decided that “sow” was “show.” Beckel is in it for the money; he doesn’t really believe he’s convincing a Fox audience that he’s anything but a half-soused nitwit.

Burt

Wheels55

The fact that people like Beckel and Colmes work for FOX as a view from the left shows they are in it for only money. However, they rarely raise a good enough point to be convincing.

Souvoter

As far as the feminists go; they are just a bunch of blowhards who took the joy out of being a woman. I keep shaking my head about FOXNEWS, the only news outlet I watch. I switch between FOX and CSPAN and even they are biased towards liberals. Like McCain and Graham, I believe they all have contracted the pc flu from the liberal ding-dongs. Sometimes, I get sick of watching!!!!!

Burt Prelutsky

Sou: Apparently “Goldberg Fan” contracted the pc flu. But I refuse to fall prey to the disease. Thirty years of leftist swill has made me immune to it.

Goldberg Fan: I’m short so I’m allowed. Besides, as I see it, it’s us against them. We conservatives are far too nice to those who regularly dismiss us as fascists, Nazis, racists and astroturf traitors. If we aren’t even allowed to ridicule the likes of Bloomberg, we might as well toss in the towel.